...that Sunday. Finally.

So...anyways...the last Sunday before school started (which was 2 weeks ago now!) Kendra's school, Kurume High School had their annual Sports Day. Almost every school, junior high and high school has a Sports Day once a year. My school, Araki Jr. High had theirs in April or May, but its common to have them in early September so the students can spend their summer vacations practicing---Japanese "vacation" is mostly in theory only. Its common for high school students especially to even spend their weekends at school studying. Gah!

But two Sundays ago, there were no books, instead the whole school broke into 3 teams, each with a color scheme and competed in some good old fashioned field day activities...with Japanese intensity of course. There were lots of relays: relays with people carrying heavy sacks,

an interesting one where one person ran the first 1/4 of the track, and then two people tied together ran the next 1/4, and then 3 people, and then 4 people finished the circuit,

there were also the basics with batons and really fast runners.

There were also two versions of tug of war. The boys competed in the tradtional 50 or so people on a side of an incredibly long rope, while the girls took part in a "steal the bacon"-ish competition where 8 shorter ropes lay in the middle of the field and the two teams lined up on either end. At the whistle, they rand to the middle and grabbed as many ropes as they could and dragged them (with the opposing team memebers hanging off of them) back over to their respective sides.

Some of the more entertaining events were the 40 + legged races where 20ish people were all tied together and had to run down the field. The three student teams competed first, and the amount of practice they had put in really showed. They counted "one, two" to keep everyone on the same foot. They all kept a good pace, "ich, ni, ich, ni, ich, ni." Their stellar performances were followed by a team of the teachers, who hadn't practiced nearly enough. Their counting ws much slower, "ich...ni...ich...ni" and they had to stop at least twice en route down the field to realign themselves and start over.

Each team also had a large coreographed dance number involving a good number of its members. Each group had costumes...cowboys, top hats and maids. Some of the cowboys had mischeviously placed the flowers on their pants right on their crotches, much to my amusement, although if I had been judging, I would have marked them down just a bit for lack of professionalism.

Then there was the ...uh, what was it called? The four man shirtless chicken fights where I thought for sure someone was going to break an appendage. Three guys on the bottom supported the top one, and the group would face off with another one and the guys on top would grab at each other and try to knock the other to the ground. It was one of the more intense events, complete with some of the most intense shirt tans I have ever seen. And to my knowledge, no one broke any body parts.

The best was saved for last though, the card/dance/chanting numbers, where the hours spent practicing really showed. I took two videos, and I hope they work because it is much better to see them than for me to try and describe them. What probably doesn't show up very well is the threatening dark sky and peals of thunder in the not so far distance. It added to the serious competitiveness of the event.

I can't wait for Araki's Sports Day in the Spring ;-)